Wednesday, October 12, 2005

An obvious comparison?

Though I don’t post on beliefnet anymore, I do still stop by to read occasionally. Lately, it’s been pretty sad with most of the discussion in the debate section consisting of the people who like to pick fights thrashing around frustrated since there’s no one to fight with.*

But there is a cool discussion going on right now about whether the comparison of civil rights for gays and civil rights for African-Americans that so easily leaps to lips like mine is, in fact, an accurate and reasonable comparison to make.

For me, it is a great comparison for making points. In a recent discussion over a restaurant that had a sign up saying “For Service, Speak English,” and has gotten in trouble for it, the comparison to a sign that said “Only whites served” or something like that seemed obvious enough. But the language issue is essentially a racial one as well.

The homosexuality comparison is a little farther off, I’ll admit.

But why supporters of gay rights want to make it seems clear enough. Nobody’s saying that race relations are anything like perfect in this country, but we have gone from a time when blatant racism was perfectly acceptable to a time when far more subtle racism is big-time frowned upon and in many ways illegal. Again, the journey isn’t over, but African Americans have gone an incredible distance and that gays and lesbians would like to go as far seems reasonable enough to me.

Can one hide one’s homosexuality? More easily than one’s race, but one can’t really hide it for long without considerable cost.

Anyway, it’s an interesting discussion and good points have been made on both sides.

Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

CC

*By far the best is a guy bitching because a woman named Kitty’s church with 225 people “only” raised $5,000 because he says that $22 from every man, woman and child in the congregation isn’t very much. Nothing says “I’ve never worked in professional fundraising” like that.

Kitty, I do this stuff for a liveing and I would kill to make $5000 for every 225 people I tried to raise from. Your church did a damn good job and don’t let anyone tell you different.